| Discovery date | approx 1600BC |
| Discovered by | - |
| Origin of the name | The name derives from the Greek 'anti - monos', meaning not alone |
| Allotropes | White Sb, Yellow Sb, Black Sb |
Sb
Antimony
51
121.760
| Group | 15 | Melting point | 630.628°C, 1167.13°F, 903.778 K |
| Period | 5 | Boiling point | 1587°C, 2889°F, 1860 K |
| Block | p | Density (g cm−3) | 6.68 |
| Atomic number | 51 | Relative atomic mass | 121.760 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 121Sb |
| Electron configuration | [Kr] 4d105s25p3 | CAS number | 7440-36-0 |
| ChemSpider ID | 4510681 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Image explanation
The symbol is the Eye of Horus, an Ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health. The Ancient Egyptians used antimony sulfide as a mascara.
Appearance
Antimony is a semi-metal. In its metallic form it is silvery, hard and brittle.
Uses
Antimony is used in the electronics industry to make some semiconductor devices, such as infrared detectors and diodes.
It is alloyed with lead or other metals to improve their hardness and strength. A lead-antimony alloy is used in batteries. Other uses of antimony alloys include type metal (in printing presses), bullets and cable sheathing.
Antimony compounds are used to make flame-retardant materials, paints, enamels, glass and pottery.
Biological role
Antimony and many of its compounds are toxic.
Natural abundance
Antimony is not an abundant element but is found in small quantities in over 100 mineral species. It is most often found as antimony(III) sulfide. It is extracted by roasting the antimony(III) sulfide to the oxide, and then reducing with carbon. Antimony can also be found as the native metal.
China produces 88% of the world’s antimony. Other producers are Bolivia, Russia and Tajikistan.
Antimony and its compounds were known to the ancients and there is a 5,000-year old antimony vase in the Louvre in Paris. Antimony sulfide (Sb2S3) is mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus of the 16th century BC. The black form of this pigment, which occurs naturally as the mineral stibnite, was used as mascara and known as khol. The most famous user was the temptress Jezebel whose exploits are recorded in the Bible.
Another pigment known to the Chaldean civilization, which flourished in what is now southern Iraq in the 6th and 7th centuries BC, was yellow lead antimonite. This was found in the glaze of ornamental bricks at Babylon and date from the time of Nebuchadnezzar (604–561 BC).
Antimony became widely used in Medieval times, mainly to harden lead for type, although some was taken medicinally as a laxative pill which could be reclaimed and re-used!
| Atomic radius, non-bonded (Å) | 2.06 | Covalent radius (Å) | 1.40 |
| Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) | 100.924 |
Electronegativity (Pauling scale) |
2.05 |
|
Ionisation energies (kJ mol−1) |
1st
830.583
2nd
1604.55
3rd
2441.1
4th
4264.7
5th
5403
6th
10420
7th
-
8th
-
|
||
| Common oxidation states | 5, 3, -3 | ||||
| Isotopes | Isotope | Atomic mass | Natural abundance (%) | Half life | Mode of decay |
| 121Sb | 120.904 | 57.21 | - | - | |
| 123Sb | 122.904 | 42.79 | - | - | |
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|
Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1) |
207 | Young's modulus (GPa) | Unknown | |||||||||||
| Shear modulus (GPa) | Unknown | Bulk modulus (GPa) | 42 | |||||||||||
| Vapour pressure | ||||||||||||||
| Temperature (K) |
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| Pressure (Pa) |
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| Listen to Antimony Podcast |
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Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: antimony(Promo) You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (End promo) Hello, this week we meet the chemical that's maimed and murdered, but often with the best intentions. To tell the story of the element that can't quite make up its mind if it's a metal or not here's Phil Ball. Phil Ball Many wars have been fought over territory, some over pride or love or money. But in the 1600s a long and bitter war was waged over antimony. What, you might ask, is there to fight about in this apparently unremarkable element, a soft, greyish metal that doesn't even conduct electricity well enough to qualify as a true metal? It has its uses, but they are mundane: as an alloy component of battery electrodes and of pewter, and as a flame retardant. But at the heart of the Antimony War, which raged in France and Germany throughout much of the seventeenth century, was a more unlikely use of antimony. Some doctors of that age believed that it was a vital ingredient in medicine. The advocates and opponents of this point of view didn't actually take up arms: they fought with pen in hand, sometimes denouncing one another in terms far more vitriolic than we'll find in the academic literature today. It's very curious that the subject of this dispute should be antimony, because this element is actually rather toxic, causing liver damage in large enough doses. But pharmaceutical uses of antimony have a long history. In the ancient world it was known primarily in the form of its black sulphide ore, called stibnite, which the Greek physician Dioscorides recommended for skin complaints in the first century AD. The Egyptians, meanwhile, used stibnite as a cosmetic, applying it as a form of mascara. They called it kuhl, meaning 'eye-paint', and to the later Islamic alchemical physicians this became al-kohl. From its original meaning of powdered stibnite, this term came to designate any powder, and then a potent extract of any substance. In the early sixteenth century the Swiss alchemical physician Paracelsus called a distilled extract of wine alcool vini, from where we get the modern word alcohol: a long and strange road from eye make-up to intoxicating liquor. Paracelsus was particularly fond of antimony compounds as medicines. After his death, Paracelsus's chemical medicine was championed by many doctors in Europe, especially in France, and some of these made antimony their most prized remedy. One, a German salt-maker who wrote under the false persona of a fifteenth-century monk called Basil Valentine, published an entire book advertising antimony remedies in 1604 called The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. Valentine admitted that antimony was poisonous - in fact he offered an apocryphal explanation for the name, saying that it derives from anti-monachos, meaning 'anti-monk' in Latin, because he once unintentionally poisoned several of his fellow monks by adding it secretly to their food in an attempt to improve their health. But he claimed that alchemy could be used to free the metal of its toxic effects and make it "a most salutary Medicine". The Paracelsian chemical physicians were opposed by traditionalists who preferred the medical theories of the ancient doctors like Hippocrates, based on the idea that our health is controlled by a balance of four humours. This was partly a battle for academic power, but the rival camps were also split along religious and political lines. So there was a lot riding on the struggle, and for a time it crystallized around the medical value of antimony. The toxicity of antimony can cause vomiting - but to its supporters, this was seen as a good thing. They would administer the salt antimony tartrate as a so-called emetic, a vomit-inducer that was believed to purge the body of other bad substances. Some doctors continued to prescribe antimony freely after the inconclusive Antimony War, and it has been suggested that a fondness for antimony remedies was what actually killed Mozart in 1791. By the nineteenth century it had become a favourite slow poison for murderers eager to conceal their crimes - a chemical villain almost as notorious as lead. Chris Smith But would Mozart have been the maestro that he was without the help of antimony? Well I guess we will never know. Thank you very much to science writer and author Phil Ball. Next week we'll be telling the tale of the element that at one time quite literally kept the world going, but not quite in the way you might think. John Emsley The summer of 1618 saw England gripped by drought, but as Henry Wicker walked across Epsom Common he came across a pool of water from which thirsty cattle refused to drink. He found that the water tasted bitter and on evaporation it yielded a salt which had remarkable effects: it acted as a laxative. This became the famous Epsom's salt (magnesium sulfate, MgSO4) and became a treatment for constipation for the next 350 years. Chris Smith 350 years, certainly sounds like a bad case of constipation. Thankfully John Emsley will be running smoothly through the element with atomic number 12 and that's magnesium in next week's Chemistry in its element, I hope you can join us. I'm Chris Smith, thank you for listening, see you next time. (Promo) Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com. There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements. (End promo) |
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Visual Elements images and videos
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
Uses and properties
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Supply risk data
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Podcasts
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Periodic Table of Videos
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
